The Part Nobody Is Asking Veteran Principals to Do — But That May Matter Most

The AI conversation in education is producing a specific anxiety in a specific group of people.

Not the anxiety about replacement — most experienced principals have moved past that or are learning to. The anxiety underneath it: the suspicion that the profession is entering a period of transformation and the people most responsible for leading others through it are being left to navigate it alone.

I built Principal Realities because the support that school leaders actually need — honest, specific, built from inside the role rather than observed from outside it — was almost entirely absent from the systems supposed to provide it.

I still believe that. And I want to add something to it now.

The veteran principals reading this are not only the ones who need mentorship through this transformation.

They are the ones who need to provide it.

What the Newer Leaders in Your Building Are Navigating

The first and second-year principal entering the AI era is navigating something no preparation program was designed to address. They are trying to simultaneously learn the basic structure of the role — the culture of the building, the staff dynamics, the community relationships, the operational systems — while also making decisions about technology that could shape what the role becomes for the next decade.

They do not have the pattern recognition to distinguish between AI tools that are genuinely useful and AI tools that are expensive solutions looking for a problem to solve. They do not have the relational history in their building to know when an AI-generated recommendation is accurate and when it is missing context that would change the call entirely. They do not have the years of leading through previous transformations that would allow them to hold the current one with appropriate perspective.

They need someone who has been through enough organizational change to know what to hold and what to let go. Someone who can model what it looks like to use technology to protect time without letting it replace presence — in a way that is visible enough to follow.

What That Mentorship Actually Looks Like

It is not a workshop on AI tools. It is not a formal mentoring program with quarterly check-ins.

It is the explicit naming of how you think about this transformation. When a newer leader asks how you are navigating AI in your building, the answer that serves them is not the one that makes you sound confident. It is the honest one — what you are adopting and why, what you are skeptical about and why, what the mistakes look like that you are trying to avoid making again.

It is the modeling of what it looks like to use efficiency tools without letting them replace your physical presence. Newer leaders are watching how you allocate your time. If what they observe is a veteran principal who adopted AI tools and became more visible in classrooms and hallways as a result — that demonstration matters more than any professional development session on the subject.

And it is the willingness to say clearly what the work is for — in a moment when that clarity is getting harder to find. The AI conversation produces a lot of noise about productivity and efficiency. The veteran principal who can stand in the middle of that noise and say: this work is about the people in this building, every decision serves that, and the technology is a tool in that direction — is providing something no amount of professional development can replace.

The Honest Ask

I know the objection. You are carrying enough already.

That is true. And I am not asking you to take on a new role or a new formal responsibility.

I am asking you to be visible about the leadership you are already doing. To let the way you navigate this transformation be something that others can learn from — not by performing it, but by not hiding it.

The profession needs the wisdom of experienced leaders in this moment more than it needs another expert telling principals how to adopt AI. What it needs is the person who has been in the building long enough to know what actually matters, modeling what it looks like to lead with that knowledge in a transformation that is trying to make everyone forget it.

That is you.

And it may be the most important contribution you make in the years ahead.